Thanks guys, I actually got a lot bigger in about 7 months renovating houses, it was a step up from manual labor but I did manage to get significantly bigger, everyone who didn't see me regularly started asking if I was working out.
Since the OP I'd been doing a basic lifting thing, essentially what teh macho recommended early in this thread, and was feeling good, making some progress, but I went to Istanbul for 10 days and have since been slacking. Back in the gym tomorrow.

11/19/2007 10:23pm,

LI GUY 1

Manual labor = grown ass man strength. you can't get that in the gym unless you do odd lifts and dinosaur training. Grown ass man strength, I want that!

Go be a garbage man, you run a few miles and lift heavy stuff all day long.

11/20/2007 1:24am,

Munacra

Ross Enamait wrote:

Quote:

Just goes to show that all of the "deadlifts are dangerous" bandwagon jumpers are full of ****.

Ross

I look up to that guy.

10/17/2008 6:45pm,

barneyruble10

everyone has their own favourites but
"new rules of lifting" by lou schuler + alwyn cosgrove
is the best program list, training schedule and "total" body work out I have come across. It also contains different programs for strength , fat loss, muscle building in 3 staged levels for experience... making a 52 week training schedule, I promise Iím not a salesman for the publisher, but this is the best I have come across, if you known of better let me know and I'll switch!!! [email protected]

10/17/2008 6:52pm,

barneyruble10

weigth training guides/books etc.

everyone has their own favourites but
"new rules of lifting" by lou schuler + alwyn cosgrove
is the best program list, training schedule and "total" body work out I have come across. It also contains different programs for strength , fat loss, muscle building in 3 staged levels for experience... making a 52 week training schedule, I promise Iím not a salesman for the publisher, but this is the best I have come across, if you known of better let me know and I'll switch!!! cheers barney (ps I'm not a girl (or gay) ie. new rules of lifting for women!!!) [email protected]

10/18/2008 4:51am,

Raining_Blood

Limit strength is a function of both muscle cross section and neural efficency. If you dont want to increase muscular cross section then the only other option is to increase the performance of your nervous system. The two main ways of achieving this is through lifting loads close to your maximal as in the maximal effort method (ME) and moving submaximal weights but with maximal velocity as in the dynamic effort method (DE).

If there are no other sports performance considerations then the best way to go about this would be to follow a powerlifting program, something like Westside Barbell. I suspect however as this isnt the case as you posted this in a martial arts forum.

10/18/2008 1:57pm,

TheRuss

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raining_Blood

Limit strength is a function of both muscle cross section and neural efficency.

Close - myofibrillar cross-section. But as discussed at some length over here, there's a lot more sarcoplasm than myofibrils, so the strength gains from increasing the latter are disproportionate to the change in muscle size.

Aside from that, pretty good post.

10/19/2008 12:14am,

Raining_Blood

While your point about sarcoplasm and myofibrillar is correct absolute muscle cross section is still a limiting factor for maximal strength production. My above post was simplifying the situation dramatically and there are more factors effecting strength than I listed but I didn't feel it appropriate to list them given the scope of the post.